The Stranger
by Cadence
Summary: Peter is always getting into trouble. And his loyal twin brother, Gabriel, is always following.


Title: The Stranger  
Pairing/Characters: Peter/Gabriel  
Rating: R  
Wordcount: 2188  
Warnings: violence, incest  
Spoilers: none  
Note: This is set in a Peter-Gabriel twinverse, where they were raised together.

Gabriel looked up to check the time on the clock tower once more, despite being aware that the clock tower was, and always had been, exactly seven and a half strokes behind his own finely tuned time piece. He sighed with aggravation, running a hand through his hair, ruffling it and twisting his wrist to confirm the _actual_ time on his wrist. Peter was running late.

This was not a new or unexpected state of affairs. Peter was unpredictable. Unreliable. Flighty and irrepressible and always finding new trouble to eagerly thrust himself into. The rest of the family was, quite fairly, exasperated by this quality in their youngest, but Gabriel found is equally repulsive and fascinating.

Not to the point of risking their father's wrath, however. Arthur Petrelli disliked tardiness, and disliked wasting gasoline while the driver idled on the streets of New York even more. Peter would probably add, Gabriel reflected, that Arthur Petrelli disliked wasting anything on behalf of Peter most of all.

With a huff, Gabriel turned on heel to stalk back into St. Mark's Catholic Preparatory, only to collide bodily with Peter on the steps, tumbling both of them to the lowest landing in a tangled heap.

"You never were a graceful one," Gabriel stated, with all irony, from beneath Peter's form.

Peter grinned down at him, wincing only slightly at the swelling around his eye. Before he could come up with a rejoinder, Gabriel was reaching up with careful fingertips to trace the imprint of a fist against Peter's flesh.

"What happened?" he hissed.

"I was just getting to that," Peter said, smile wavering only slightly. He climbed off Gabriel, dusting off his uniform slacks before offering a hand to Gabriel. Pulling his brother up with a quick grunt of exertion, Peter continued, "You and I have a date."

The pieces slid together, and Gabriel groaned. "I don't want to fight."

"Neither do I," Peter said, wrapping a conspiratorially arm around Gabriel, guiding him down the last few steps to the waiting car. "But sometimes you have to make a stand."

Gabriel did not actually see the world that way; taking a stand generally meant the break down of order, which just meant more people getting hurt, and to what purpose was that? The new was as bad as the old, no one was any better than any one else. Peter called him a fatalistic nihilist, but Gabriel just thought it was a matter of being practical.

He could admit, though, that those rules didn't seem to apply to Peter. There was something about him, something luminous, something _special_, so that even these disastrous upsets seemed to lead to something good.

So whatever Peter's cause du jour, Gabriel was nearly always at his heels, swept up in the charge.

"Who threw the first punch?" Gabriel asked, because although both he and Peter knew that he would go along, he did like knowing the fine print first.

"Casey," Peter said promptly enough that Gabriel doubted it. Peter had the Petrelli knack for easy lies that Gabriel somehow never mastered. Not about himself, in any case. Give him another role to slid into, make the lies a game, and he could spin anyone around.

In the car, Peter laid out the full story: his girlfriend who wasn't his girlfriend (largely due to her being with another girl) was being harassed by Casey and his older brother Dave. Lewd comments led to shoving and groping, and since Peter's sense of chivalry outweighed both his good sense and his body mass, he intervened. Gabriel pointed out that as the near-girlfriend in question, Corrina, had a black belt, she probably would have been the more suitable choice for physical violence. Or perhaps her six foot girlfriend, also present.

"She's my friend, Gabe," Peter replied, and it was the nickname that sealed it.

Gabriel sighed, rubbing his eyes with his hand.

"When is the rematch?" he asked.

"Tomorrow."

"And what were you planning on telling Dad about your bruises?" he asked, genuinely curious. "You would have been better off waiting for a fight until tomorrow, when Mom and Dad are out of own."

Peter snorted. "With Nathan at home? No way. That would be a million times worse. He'd get Casey and Dave arrested and sent to Sing Sing."

"And Dad won't?" Gabriel asked skeptically. There was the good name of the family to consider, he reasoned.

"Of course not," Peter scoffed and Gabriel slid a glance to the driver in the front of the car. He often wondered how much of what they said got back to their father. Peter said it was everything and nothing, and Gabriel privately agreed, although not for the reasons that Peter would guess.

Their father was a controlling man, and any other boy would not envy Peter's fractious relationship with him. Gabriel did, because he was sick of being the "nothing" that was reported.

Their mother tutted over them when hey entered; Arthur poured himself another finger of whiskey. Dinner conversation was dominated by talk of Nathan's doings, present and future. Mom and Dad debated the impact of prosecuting the notorious Wall Street money laundering ring on Nathan's Congressional prospects – Mom believed it built a populist image and Dad believed it would cause serious fund raising issues among other, friendlier white collar criminals. Neither Peter nor Gabriel mentioned their upcoming graduation. Gabriel had gotten into Columbia and was quite proud, but he knew that his present accomplishments were no match for Nathan's predicted future.

Peter was largely silent throughout dinner, disappearing into the background as he sometimes did when their parents' focus turned to Nathan. It was rare commonality between the mismatched twin, and Gabriel found himself oddly thankful for it.

They retreated to their room not long after dinner, ostensibly to study. It was little more than that, really. Gabriel wanted so much more, a gnawing ache in his chest that built up around Peter that he didn't quite know how to slake. He would look at Peter's beautiful, off balance face and feel sick to his stomach. He _wanted_.

Peter would let him kiss and touch, never anything more, and Gabriel was too afraid of pressing for more. He felt the wrongness of it all, while Peter laughed it off. Gabriel felt nauseous when he thought about it, but he knew the truth. For Peter, Gabriel was an experiment. Practice.

They kissed languidly on Peter's bed, Gabriel crushing down on him, humping against Peter's leg. Peter groaned and arched, eyelashes fluttering. Gabriel watched his every reaction greedily.

Peter trailed a hand down Gabriel's back, pressing his uniform shirt down against sweat beaded skin and smiling at Gabriel's shudder. He arched again and kissed Gabriel's ear, before nudging Gabriel in the side, signaling an end to their affair. Gabriel shifted to the side and then slumped onto the bed, hard and angry, glaring at the ceiling.

"Why are you such a tease?" Gabriel groused, almost mumbling, eyes cast to the ceiling as he fumbled his hand into his pants almost against his own will.

"You've got two perfectly good hands," Peter replied distractedly, clearly searching out his cell phone. He frowned, a small furrow forming between his eyebrows as he kneeled down to look under his bed. Gabriel imagined Peter kneeling _for him_ and stroked faster. Peter ruined the moment, popping up again with an annoyed look, "Gabe, not on my bed."

Gabriel groaned again, and failed to appreciate the box of tissue Peter lobbed at him, landing with a sharp corner in his stomach. He tried to manage a glare, but Peter just rolled his eyes, turning away to look again for his cell phone. To call his fucking girlfriend no doubt.

After Gabriel finished, unsatisfyingly to the chirpy sound of Corrina's tinny, too loud voice on the phone, he slumped over to his room.

Peter's bruising looked worse in the morning, but it again passed without comment from their parents. Angela was in a phase of doting on Gabriel, nearly as obnoxious as the times when she would meet his eyes with a wary distance in her own, a hidden warning he didn't know how to read. She kissed him on the forehead at breakfast, held his hand at the table, asked about his classes and even coyly suggested setting up a date with the daughter of one of her society friends.

Her affection, when it manifested, was almost overwhelming, and Gabriel never quite knew what to do with it. To be perfectly truthful, he didn't know what to do with any of his family. They never fit together right for him, or maybe he never fit with them. No, it was the other way, he was sure. There was a way families were supposed to be, and the Petrellis were not it. His entire life he had felt a jarring sense of wrongness around them – his own family, he reminded himself – and he knew enough about life now to start to see some of the cracks in the pattern.

It wasn't him, it was them.

And yet he couldn't fight the current of it all. He certainly couldn't direct it.

Sometimes he was aware of the depthless rage filling the hollows he felt in himself around his family, in their shadow. More often he covered it with devotion to his brother, because Peter was certainly easier to focus on.

The school day passed quickly, Gabriel's focus internal as he tried to fight his anger. A niggling part of him said he was being used. A larger part said that was how the Petrellis played, and it was his own fault he wasn't up to the game.

In the afternoon light, in the courtyard between the girl's school and St. Mark's, the boys gathered for the fight. Gabriel had trouble remembering why, sun harsh in his eyes.

Peter clapped solidly on the arm, grinning up at him.

"Glad you've got my back, Gabe," he said.

Gabriel just nodded jerkily, wondering how they were going to do this. When. It would be easier if it would just start already and they could lose. Gabriel didn't think he'd be very good at violence.

Dave and Casey nodded to Peter and Gabriel, almost formally, and then they threw punches. Dave was bigger, broader, and perhaps had a sense of fair play. He had aimed at Gabriel, hitting him solidly in the jaw. Gabriel stumbled back, almost to the ground. His ears rang with the impact of Dave's fist. Worriedly, he glanced over to Peter, bu he was ducking and weaving, more adept at this fighting business than Gabriel would have suspected.

Dave took advantage of his distraction, hitting him again. This blow did drive Gabriel to the ground. Dave punched him again, following him down, fist pummeling into Gabriel's ribs. He groaned at the impact, gritting his teeth. Wildly, he swung back.

Laughing, Dave sprang back up, well out of the reach of Gabriel's desperate flailing. Anger snapped in Gabriel, echoing against the emptiness inside. He glared at Dave, bring himself back to his feet.

Shaking his head, bouncing on his feet like this was nothing, Dave came forward again. He punched at Gabriel's face, knocking his glasses to the ground.

"Come on, that's all you've got?" Dave taunted.

"You're _nothing_," Gabriel growled back, surprising himself. But it was true. Dave was nothing. Casey was nothing. _Gabriel_ was nothing.

He chanced another look over at Peter, rage and focus gathering.

Vision a blur, he launched himself at Dave. His blows were clumsy, he felt his own knuckles crack under the impacts, but accurate.

There was a lot of noise for some time, wet blood in the creases of Gabriel's fists, and then it was quieter.

Dave didn't get up, again, and Gabriel came back to himself. Panting. Satisfied.

Peter looked up at him in shock, waving Casey off from where he restrained Gabriel's arms. It was lucky, Gabriel thought, that he didn't know Casey was back there. Just the thought of being touched by him made a terrifying urge rise up once more to strangle Gabriel.

"Hey, Gabe, you alright there?" Peter asked, fear in his eyes.

Gabriel stared at his twin, still quivering inside. He tried not to look past Peter, to Dave's mangled face.

"I'm okay," he eventually croaked. Peter breathed out a long, difficult sounding breath, stepping easily into Gabriel's arms for an embrace.

Gabriel shuddered under the touch. God, _this_. This was why he loved Peter. This easy forgiveness, easy understanding. Even if Peter didn't understand. Even if Peter was at fault, the one who _made_ Gabriel do this.

The thought made his anger spark again, but Gabriel looked away, turning his face against Peter's in half tearful kiss. He hated this moment, because he recognized, again, what it was.

Gabriel loved and hated Peter in equal measure, and every time he realized that anew he mourned for their relationship. He mourned because he knew that the day would come when his hate eclipsed his love and he knew he would not mourn anything then.


End file.
